White House involvement would seem to contradict Holder's testimony under oath.

Related.

I know gerrymander was trying to come off bi-partisan by mentioning the Nixon assertions of executive privilege.  But, how about a more recent example of Republican shenanigans, like when Veep Cheney claimed executive privilege on any documents or discussions had in his offices on energy policy even after he had spent the previous five years asserting the office of the Veep wasn't an executive office?

I am shitfitter; hear me roar.

I find it interesting that

Holder told reporters that he offered to provide the documents on the condition that Issa gave his assurance that doing so would satisfy two committee subpoenas and resolve the dispute.

But now, apparently, turning over the documents would impede the executive branch's ability to fulfill it's constitutional duties as an independent part of the USFG.  That's the definition of executive privilege, after all, the rational behind it.  I don't see how the exact same documents could have undergone a transformation from a bargaining chip in negotiations, willing to be given up in a horse trade, to a matter of constitutional importance.

I suspect that these particular documents don't really matter that much in and of themselves, but they could be bread crumbs to more damning evidence, either legally or politically.  So, play them up as much as possible, and then "compromise" by turning them over.  Then, if followup is requested (more documents!), play the partisan witch hunt card as an investigation that never ends.  If these inferences are correct, it's a very shrewd move, and could quite possibly "work" in the political sense.

the secret to happiness is to have you pay for my cocaine and mountain climbing-p0157

"1954 - During the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, Eisenhower used the claim of executive privilege to forbid the 'provision of any data about internal conversations, meetings, or written communication among staffers, with no exception to topics or people.'"

[Obviously trying to cover-up his Communist connections, and it worked! You never hear anyone accuse Eisenhower of being Communist these days.]

"The Clinton administration invoked executive privilege on fourteen occasions. In 1998, President Bill Clinton became the first President since Nixon to assert executive privilege and lose in court, when a Federal judge ruled that Clinton aides could be called to testify in the Lewinsky scandal. Later, Clinton exercised a form of negotiated executive privilege when he agreed to testify before the grand jury called by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr only after negotiating the terms under which he would appear."

[He LIED about his sex life! In Court! And he raped that woman, and he killed that staffer, and he kept screwing all those fat ugly women! He had no taste at all. Bastard.]

"The Bush administration invoked executive privilege on six occasions. President George W. Bush first asserted executive privilege to deny disclosure of sought details regarding former Attorney General Janet Reno, the scandal involving Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) misuse of organized-crime informants James J. Bulger and Stephen Flemmi in Boston, and Justice Department deliberations about President Bill Clinton's fundraising tactics, in December 2001. Bush invoked executive privilege 'in substance' in refusing to disclose the details of Vice President Dick Cheney's meetings with energy executives, which was not appealed by the GAO. In a separate Supreme Court decision in 2004, however, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted 'Executive privilege is an extraordinary assertion of power 'not to be lightly invoked.' United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1, 7 (1953)."

[Blah, blah, Harriet Miers, blah, Joshua Bolten, blah, blah, Pat Tillman, blah, Karl Rove, blah, blah, J. Scott Jennings, blah, Andy Vollmer, et alia ad nauseum.]

So, Obama finally used executive privilege too? OMG! Guilty as charged! [What did he do again?]

(Or maybe just cynical, as ThePlague suggests. But either way...)

And yet zealots of the Republican cult were completely unable to connect the bright red flashing dots between a cabinet composed of the founding members of the PNAC and the ginning up of evidence for a war that killed tens of thousands of civilians, costs the American tax payers hundreds of billions of dollars and only accomplished further destabilization of the region.

Do get me wrong, Obama is a tool. He is obviously hiding misdeeds. But trying to equate this with what Nixon or Dubya did is transparently absurd.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it" ~Sinclair

Personally I'm sort of getting fast and furious fatigue at this point and I suppose that's part of Holder's strategy. Hopefully they've stirred enough of the NRA's hornets nest that their strategy of using the charade as an excuse to ban guns has sufficiently backfired and that's all the upside I care about at the end of the day.

I HAD HAD SEX WITH HUNTER S THOMPSON. HE CAME IN MY MOUTH AND I SWALLOWED IT. I SHOULD HAVE HAD HIS BABY. WE WOULD BE BALLIN' LIKE KOBE'S SON!!

Informative analysis from a former federal prosecutor. Among other things he points out the wiretaps used mean senior DOJ officials must have been involved in F&F. Also interesting:

Washington-based Justice Department officials had earlier [in 2010] discussed bringing Attorney General Eric Holder to Phoenix for a triumphant press conference with Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke to herald the conclusion of the Department's flagship firearms trafficking case. In the aftermath of Agent Terry's death, the task of announcing indictments at a press conference fell to ATF Phoenix Division Special Agent in Charge William Newell and Burke. Holder did not attend.

Flashback to 2009:

Meeting face-to-face with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Obama on Thursday said the U.S. is to blame for much of Mexico's drug violence, and he set up a major congressional gun-control battle by calling on the Senate to ratify a treaty designed to track and cut the flow of guns to other countries.

Mr. Obama said he wants to renew a ban on some semiautomatic weapons but that it is not likely to pass Congress. Instead, he called for the Senate to ratify a decade-old hemispherewide treaty that would require nations to mark all weapons produced in the country and track them to make sure no weapons were exported to countries where they were banned.

"I will not pretend that this is Mexico's responsibility alone. The demand for these drugs in the United States is what's helping keep these cartels in business," Mr. Obama said at a joint news conference with Mr. Calderon. "This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border."